'The thing about Teddy is that he wouldn’t want fuss' says Sars captain

On the brown clay covering McCarthy’s grave, they placed the county Cup and a blue and white flag. Printed on it was the message, THIS ONE IS FOR YOU TEDDY.

FOR TEDDY: Sarsfields player Cian D'Arcy raises the cup during the homecoming celebrations. Picture: David Creedon

As they made their way homeward from Páirc Uí Chaoimh on Sunday evening, the Sars team bus detoured to Rathcooney Cemetery. They’d come to tell a departed friend of their return to the local summit.

On the brown clay covering Teddy McCarthy’s grave, they placed the county Cup. The League crown, won back in July, sat beside it.

In front of the two pieces of silverware lay a blue and white flag. Printed on it was the message, THIS ONE IS FOR YOU TEDDY.

At their county final press morning the weekend before last, Sars manager Johnny Crowley told this writer how they’d not mentioned Teddy Mac in the dressing room on the road to Sunday. Teddy would have wanted it that way. For as captain Conor O’Sullivan remarked in the long corridor underneath the South Stand after pocketing his fifth county medal, the man didn’t like a fuss when the fuss was about himself.

And while they respected that on the journey to Sunday and built no dressing-room crusade to honour his memory, once the final whistle had gone and the destination successfully reached, they made sure to make a fuss.

“The thing about Teddy is that he was a larger-than-life character, but he wouldn’t want fuss,” said O’Sullivan.

“What Cian [Teddy’s son] said at the funeral was that Teddy just wanted to get on with stuff. He wanted to watch hurling, he wanted to be involved in hurling, and he wanted to talk about hurling afterwards.

“He didn’t want the attention on him, but it always was, given the character that he was.” 

Sars players pay their respects to the late Teddy McCarthy with the Tadhg Og Murphy Cup

He was central in Sunday’s celebratory conversations because it was he, in his role as vice-chairman, who coaxed Crowley back for a second stint as manager last autumn.

Sars had failed to emerge from their group last year. Teddy reckoned Crowley was the man to enable this group to realise the very obvious potential that was there.

Crowley, though, initially turned down the offer.

“I think Teddy would be the last person you’d want on to you if you didn’t want to do something” O’Sullivan laughed of their manager having his mind changed.

“He’d turn you and you’d have no say in the matter. When Teddy died, he was vice-chairman of Sars and there’s no person in the club who doesn’t have a story about him.

“He was just an unbelievable character, and everybody thought he’d live to be 300. He’s an absolute legend of the club, so we’re glad to put his name on that one.” 

He was not the sole Sars man looking proudly down on Sunday.

“We lost Teddy, Dave ‘Fox’ [McCarthy], Gearóid Duggan, Paddy Lambe, Willie Barry, even Eddie O’Connell, who sponsored us for years and they’re still sponsoring us.

“We’ve great people like that around us – they mean so much to us. Sars means so much to us. The group means so much to everyone.

“Sars shaped us all into the hurlers we are and into the people we are.” 

And yet this campaign marked a departure from how Sars typically went about their business inside the four white lines. In the semi-final and final, they won coming from behind. They grafted rather than indulging in anything glamorous.

“We’re dogged now,” the captain continued.

“I said to the boys after one of the matches, every round there was a different question put to us. We just found different answers to different questions.

“When we had a different question put to us on Sunday, we still found the answer. I don’t know did I even realise it got to 0-13 to 0-7, to be honest with you, I was so caught up in it.

“Regardless of the result, I would have been proud of the performance walking off the pitch after that, even if Midleton snuck a goal at the end. It’s just to be able to say that about yourself, that’s the mark of a good team, I think.” 

The 34-year-old is part of a group containing Craig Leahy, Daniel Roche, and Daniel Kearney that played in the club's famine-ending county final win all of 15 years ago in 2008.

On Sunday, they ended another, albeit shorter, famine to collect a fifth county medal.

“I can’t rank my children, I can’t rank my counties either,” he signed off.